THE Cooking Playlist

I have two major passions in my life. Oops, forgot about the kids – make that THREE major passions in my life. But this isn’t a mommy blog, so you’re stuck with the other two.

The first is food. Pretty obvious considering my blogging name, right? I love making food, eating other food that people made for me, reading about food, telling others about food. The only thing I don’t like about food is being covered in it while naked virgins lick it off me.

But I’m willing to learn.

The second is music. People always assume my dream job would be to open a restaurant. Hell NO! Who needs that grief? My dream job would a rock or pop star of some kind for the money, the fame, the artistic expression. And – oh yeah – the naked virgins licking me.

(I tried finding a funny picture by Googling “Naked Virgins Licking Me.” But, alas, I couldn’t settle on one. But you may have better luck. Let me know how that goes)

I used to love putting together mixtapes. Back in the day, no party was complete without one of mine. They turned the lamest of sausage-fest parties into epic galas. A whole generation of Chicagoans was conceived to my mixtapes. This was back when they were actually on tapes –

So imagine my dismay when my cousin, El Douchebag, told me that Guy Fieri has a mixtape. You know who Fieri is, right? He owns a bunch of restaurants, has hosted several shows on TV, and is arguably responsible for the rising popularity of cooking amongst men.

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He’s also the biggest, fucking douchebag I’ve ever laid eyes on. The hair, the sunglasses, the bowling shirts, the overgrown fratboy “BRO!” attitude. And that douchebaggery extends to his restaurant menu with items like “Guy-talian Fondue Dippers,” “Righteous Rojo Rings,” “The Mayor of Flavortown Burger,” and “Brutha’s Badass Caesar Salad.” (OK, that last one is pretty cool.)

So it comes to no surprise that his mixtape would contain songs like “Foodie Fuccbois” and “Grease Trap Queen” –

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It even has Fieri’s own Kid Rock-style hiphop song “Donkey Sauce”

Alas, it’s all fake.

But since I’m probably the second biggest douche you’ll encounter today, I feel that qualifies me to fill this Guy Fieri void. I’ve decided to put together my own food mixtape. … Er, I guess that would be a “playlist” because I just sold my cassette player on eBay.

None of it’s food related (except for the name of one of the artists), just music that I groove to while cooking. Bon appétit!

Nice playlist. Speaking of “mixtape,” Mawby (of the delicious Leelanau Peninsula sparkling wines), released a couple of dry white wines, one of them called “mixtape,” so maybe you should’ve held on to your cassettee deck just in case it becomes the new retro rage).

I don’t have a set playlist while I cook, but I learned one thing: never tell the kids, “Why don’t you play some of your music while I prep dinner.”

I have started a new tradition that’s sort of related to this topic. When we have people over for dinner, invariably they ask, “What can we bring?” I’m now asking people to bring a playlist. They can either forward it to me or just plug in their iPhones to our Bose dock. So far so good. We had friends over the day after Halloween and told them to bring a playlist, not of spooky dorky Halloween songs, but a Day of the Dead (November 1/All Saints Day) list. To their credit, they came though with a clutch list.